Released 30.01.26

The Conversation

Adam Weymouth is a British author and environmental journalist. His first book, Kings of the Yukon, traced the 2,000-mile migration of the king salmon along the Yukon River — from the Bering Sea deep into the heart of Canada. His latest book,  Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe, follows another extraordinary true journey, this time of a wolf named Slavc, who crosses the Alps from Slovenia to Italy in search of a mate. The result — shortlisted for the Ballie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, among other major literary accolades — is a book that will not only endure because of Adam's exquisite, lyrical writing, but because of the gravitas of the enquiry, into how we respond to change in this bewildering moment of ecological and political upheaval.

In this conversation, Adam talks about how the genesis of the book, and how his journey evolved. He weaves in myth, fairtytales, werewolves. He brings to life characters and places he meets along the way, and shares candid insights into his working practices on the road, including the necessity of going slowly, at the pace of a walk.

Adam explains how the wolf and our fear of ‘the other’ also works a metaphor for the attitude to migrants from a rising Far Right. He and Sophy discuss anthropomorphism — it it such a bad thing? — and the presence/absence of the first-person voice in modern nature and travel writing. The result is a generous, thoughtful dialogue about what it means to be using journeys as a means to talk about much more than a single animal’s plight. And the imaginative power of writing into how it might be feel to be in another creature’s skin.

“Perhaps we're all a little bit more animal than we'd like to think,” says Adam.

Image: Michael Turek

Books discussed:

Adam Weymouth
— Lone Wolf
— Kings of the Yukon

Anna Badkhen
— Bright Unbearable Reality

Horatio Clare
— We Came By Sea